A citizens’ petition to fully legalize the drug’s use, possession and sale has received more than 170,000 signatures in the week since a 25-year-old economics student posted it to the UK government’s e-petitions site.

The House of Commons will consider any issue with more than 100,000 signatures, and Parliament is expected to schedule the debate on cannabis this week.

But despite support for decriminalization among the public and police officers, drug policy experts think the chance the government will legalize marijuana at this point is only slightly more likely than, say, Queen Elizabeth II toking live on television.

“There’s just no way they’re going to legalize cannabis in this climate. There’s no chance at all,” says Caroline Chatwin, senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent.

Under Prime Minister David Cameron, the government has taken a firm anti-drug stance. It stripped proposals to reform the country’s drug laws out of a report published last fall.

Parliament is currently considering a bill that would ban all “psychoactive substances,” including legal highs like laughing gas. The government is keen to get that passed.

So legalizing pot while criminalizing poppers? Nope. Not happening.

“Politicians are behind the curve compared to the public on this issue,” says Niamh Eastwood, executive director of Release, a UK advocacy group that lobbies for drug policy reform.

More than half the British public supported marijuana legalization in a 2013 survey.

With police forces around the country facing steep austerity-era budget cuts, even many law enforcement officials are no longer willing to incur those costs.

“It has never been a top priority to go looking for cannabis in people’s houses,” Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told the BBC on Tuesday. “If somebody was caught they would be dealt with at the very lower end of the scale.”

The bad news you probably already know: Cecil the lion, one of Zimbabwe’s best loved wild animals, was slain last week at the hands of unscrupulous safari guides and, it’s claimed, a crossbow-happy dentist from Minnesota.

Cecil’s death, sadly, is only the tip of the iceberg — and unlike the real icebergs we’re so intent on melting, this one ain’t shrinking, it’s growing. Each year humans deliberately kill thousands of the animals we’re privileged to share the planet with, even the ones we nominally call “protected.” Not content with destroying their habitats and compromising their food supply, some members of our species hunt and slaughter creatures that are already struggling to survive.

It’s not just humans who want to shoot something. More often it’s organized criminals who want to cut up animals and sell them to different humans who think they’ll make them live longer or look good on a wall. Other times it’s impoverished people looking for ready cash, or even a meal.

Whatever poachers’ motivations, they’re threatening to wipe some of the most vulnerable species off the face of the earth. Here are six animals that, like Cecil, poaching might rob us of forever.

1. Elephants

Right now, poachers are the single biggest threat to elephants’ survival. After decades of decimation of elephant populations for their ivory, the international trade in “white gold” was banned in 1989. Yet people’s persistent willingness to hand over bigger and bigger sums of money for dead elephant tusk — in China, $2,100 per kilo on average as of last year — has made it more tempting than ever for profit seekers to kill elephants illegally. The most comprehensive survey to date stated that 100,000 African elephants were poached across the continent between 2010 and 2012. According to those figures, in 2011 alone poachers killed roughly one in every 12 African elephants.

Sometimes elephant poachers, like Cecil the lion’s killers, use bows and arrows as their weapon of choice. Sometimes they tip the arrows with poison, like the people who last year slaughtered one of Kenya’s most famous elephants, Satao, and hacked off his magnificent 6.5-foot tusks. Other hunting expeditions have seen gangs turn grenades and AK-47s on entire herds, even within the supposed shelter of national parks.

Asian elephants, considered an even more vulnerable species, are also hunted for their tusks, body parts, meat and hide. Unlike their African cousins, only male Asian elephants have tusks — a fact that makes the consequences of poaching even more devastating, since the selective killings of bulls creates a gender imbalance and thereby reduces reproduction in the remaining population.

2. Rhinos

Rhinoceroses, like elephants, suffer the misfortune of having an external protrusion that humans arbitrarily place a crazily high value upon. Crazy, crazy high: rhino horn was reported to be selling for $65,000 per kilo in 2012, making it more expensive by weight than gold, diamonds or cocaine.

The demand comes from Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, where some people believe that consuming rhino horn — approximate nutritional value: human fingernails — will cure everything from cancer to hangovers to a dull night out. The black market demand for rhino horn has led to a surge in poaching of the critically endangered black rhino and the more numerous southern white rhino across southern Africa since 2008. This is especially the case in South Africa, where illegal killings hit another record high this year at 393 in the 12 months till April.

And that’s not counting legal deaths. Trophy hunters can pay more than $100,000 for the “right” to kill a rhino and keep its horn, under a government scheme that allows hunters to shoot one rhino a year with the proper permit. Many suspect it’s open to abuse by people who’ve come for the horn, not the hunt. Either way, the rhino ends up dead.

3. Tigers

Fact: humans are the worst thing ever to happen to tigers. We’d hunted them down to just 5,000 and 7,000 individuals worldwide by the late 1990s. That was considered a dangerously low number then. By 2014, it had halved. Some estimates say fewer than 2,500 mature tigers currently exist in the wild.

The problem is our passion for every part of them: Tiger skins, bones, teeth, claws, tails and even whiskers find a place on the black market as decorative items or ingredients in traditional Asian remedies. The illegal trade is further fueled by tiger farms in China and Vietnam, where large numbers of the animals are bred for their body parts. Depressingly, as many as three times more tigers exist on such farms than in the wild. Elsewhere, tigers are reared to be killed in “canned” hunts by trophy seekers.

Even in the wild, we’re killing tigers faster than we can destroy their habitat. The most haunting proof that poaching is the greatest threat to tigers? “Empty forest syndrome”: Roughly 620,000 square miles of what should be tiger habitat currently lies unoccupied.

4. Sea turtles

Don’t imagine that poachers only ransack the land. Oh no, they find plenty to kill in the sea, too. One of their most popular targets is the hawksbill, the tropical turtle whose beautiful yellow-and-brown shell provides the commodity known as tortoiseshell. Millions of the animals have been killed over the past century to feed the fashion for tortoiseshell jewelry, glasses, ornaments, instruments and other items, with the result that the species is now critically endangered. The international trade has been banned for almost 40 years, but a black market continues to thrive in Asia, notably China and Japan, and in the Americas.

Hawksbills are also killed for what’s under their shell — their meat. Either it’s eaten by humans, or used as bait to catch sharks. Other parts of their body are used to make leather, perfume and cosmetics, or stuffed whole and displayed as “decoration.”

For all sea turtles, including the leatherbacks and green turtles that also find themselves on the receiving end of poachers’ deadly attention, poaching is potentially catastrophic. The animals take so long to reach breeding age — more than 30 years, in some cases — that many are killed before they ever have the chance to reproduce.

5. Lemurs

There are no mammals on earth more endangered than lemurs — and yet, we’re still hunting them. Over 90 percent of all species of the big-eyed primates — found only on the island of Madagascar — are considered vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.

Deforestation and climate change are largely to blame for their decline. But hunting lemurs for their meat, which has reportedly increased in the chaos that followed Madagascar’s 2009 coup, is also diminishing their tiny numbers. Despite legislation that makes killing them illegal, lemurs are poached either to be sold to restaurants or simply to be eaten by impoverished locals desperate for food.

The tragic irony is that a lemur in the hand is worth much less than two in the bush. Like lions in Zimbabwe, lemurs are a huge tourism attraction for Madagascar and will always make more profit for more people alive than dead. Not to mention the fact that NO ONE SHOULD BE KILLING LEMURS ANYWAY.

6. Gorillas

Still clinging on to a scrap of faith in humanity? Prepare to drop it, quick. We humans are slaughtering the greatest of our fellow great apes, the gorilla.

Gorillas used to be protected from our murderous appetite by the huge tracts of unspoiled forest in Central Africa that they lived in. But then — oopsy! — we spoiled it. Logging, new roads and the migrations caused by successive wars brought people within firing range of gorillas. You can guess what happened next. What began as subsistence hunting quickly grew into an illicit commercial trade in gorilla meat that sees the animals butchered, transported and sold on. An increasing number of them make it as far as cities, where restaurants serve up “bushmeat” to wealthy clientele who like their dinner endangered.

If that weren’t enough, poachers have begun to target gorillas for their body parts, to be used in folk remedies or simply as trophies. Heads, hands and feet are said to be particularly popular.

Other gorillas are casualties of other crimes in their protected habitat. In the Democratic Republic of Congo’s historic Virunga National Park, mountain gorillas have been found shot through the back of the head, execution-style, in attacks blamed on traders who illegally harvest wood to make charcoal from the protected forest.

All species of gorilla are suffering, including the critically endangered western lowland gorilla. Combined with habitat loss, climate change and disease, numbers are now so low and reproduction so limited that the deaths of even a few animals at the hands of poachers stand to have a major impact on the population. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, by the middle of this century we may well have wiped out more than 80 percent of all western gorillas in just three generations.

1. As a wee one, you easily confused Storybook Glen for Disneyland.

2. There was literally nothing better than the flumes at the Beach Leisure Centre.

Except maybe the Friday night discos at the ice rink or the outdoor pool in Stonehaven.

3. You still get cravings for Murray Cup and Um Bongo.

Not to mention Rainbow Drops, Wham bars, Irn Bru bars… You might not have been a healthy loon, but you were a happy loon. That’s what matters.

4. By the time you were born, the tattie holidays had nothing to do with tatties.

5. There was no joy greater than a snow day.

Sledging till your socks were soaked through and your cheeks were bitten red, coming in to the warmth of the fire, Supermarket Sweep, piles of buttery toast and mugs of Cadbury’s hot chocolate… It was the best, until the snow days turned to weeks and you never wanted to see Dale Winton again.

6. The best days in primary school were the ones when pudding was choc ices.

Those blue wrappers are still pure nostalgia for you. You even get pangs for Turkey Twizzlers. Sometimes.

7. Without fail, January 25th meant being forced to sing and recite Rabbie Burns poems and Scottish folksongs…

Standing up on stage in the village hall, aged 10, and doing a Skye Boat Song solo could not have been more cringe.

8. …But it was worth all the embarrassment in the world just to see your dad plunging a knife into the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race” that same night.

So much drama for an overstuffed sausage! You loved it, even if you hated haggis.

9. A Sunday roast that saw a hunk of silverside placed on the table was the best, because it meant only one thing…

Stovies accompanied by beetroot, oatcakes, and cold glass after cold glass of milk. You did try to go vegan once, but how could you say goodbye to your (delicious) roots?

13. Codonas was class.

14. You never signed your letters off with “from.”

15. Summer holiday mornings began with Big Breakfast…

Until that came to an end, and double bills of Dawson’s Creek on T4 saw you through till midday.

16. The Northsound 1 concerts in Duthie Park each summer were unreal.

Darius! Cleopatra! Hear’Say!

17. August was the always the best month.

Because there was, and will never be, a greater delight than walking country lanes gorging on wild raspberries and brambles in the sun.

18. But June and July were pretty great too.

Bowlfuls of Mackie’s ice cream and strawberries might have something to do with that.

19. The first thing you learned to make in Home Ec was cheesy beanos.

Somehow even that dish took a double period to make.

20. The neds at school smoked tabbies in the woodies…

Huddled under bridges, crammed into back alleys… if it smelled of urine, the Lammie Bammies would be OOT. If you were into that sort of thing, you probably couldn’t afford your own, so you’d resort to begging the older lads for leavings. Or if you were having a really bad day, you weren’t above pleading in your smallest voice, “See’s the beef?” Yep, you willingly smoked other people’s soggy yellow cigarette butts. It was probably the same at Gwyneth Paltrow’s high school in Santa Monica, though, right?

21. Amadeus under 18s night was INCREDIBLE.

You were in the biggest club in Scotland. There were babes from other schools. If you got lucky, you might even get a trap from one of those babes from other schools. Could life get any better? Never.

22. Most of your pocket money went to Superdrug and Boot’s.

Because that creamy blue Maybelline eyeshadow you gunked on your lids straight from the tube didn’t come cheap! Okay, it did, but it felt expensive when you’d already spent most of your money clubbing together with your pals for a few orange WKDs on Friday night. That eyeshadow was a wonder of a thing though — caking and crusting over 13 year-old eyelids like luminescent trails of incredible blue slime. Once you’d ironed your hair straight (with an actual iron) and popped on your Adidas shell toes and biggest GAP hoodie, a pale pink slick of Bourjois Effet 3D lipgloss and a spritz of Impulse was all you then needed to feel like the next Britney Spears.

23. You had a Nokia 6100.

And there was only one thing better than Snake. And that was Snake II. Or maybe MSN Messenger.

24. You remember a time when Union Street was lively.

You loved it all — the St. Nicholas Centre because you could read the magazines for free in WHSmith, the Trinity Centre because HMV, and right next door, Virgin Megastore. But the Bon Accord Centre food court had the best pizza meal deal around, so it was the best.

25. Saturday nights in Liquid were amazing.

Or were they?

26. You once went to Charlie’s by accident.

Five minutes later, you came out trembling having been repeatedly asked by hard-faced girls what you were looking at and if you were “starting.”

27. You started driving lessons the day of your 17th birthday.

In fact, you’d have started them at midnight if you could, because in the words of that great Scot, Mel Gibson, “FREEEEEEDOM!”

No more calling mum and dad for lifts from village hall parties at 2am, ever! No wonder they forked out for your lessons.

28. At times, Aberdeenshire made you feel claustrophobic.

Castles, tearooms, distilleries… at some point you probably yearned for wider horizons. And then you’d go to the beach, the sand slipping beneath your feet and marram flicking your knees as you tumbled down the dunes to the edge of the roaring North Sea. Just you, birds, sky, and water — it made you realise that, actually, you’re from a pretty incredible part of the world after all. ]]>

A photo posted by cardhousedreamer (@cardhousedreamer) on Jul 31, 2015 at 12:27pm PDT

1. No one gets away with doing just one sport here.

Think you can get away with just being a skier? Not in Whistler. If you call the Village your home, be prepared to master, at the very least, one activity per season. It might overcrowd your gear room, but when everyone is limbering up to jump on their Beaver Boards for some yoga on Nita Lake, you’ll be thankful you took up paddle boarding last summer.

2. You can ride a bobsleigh.

Ever watch Cool Runnings? Yeah, it’s all sorts of awesome. And so is the fact that you can ride a piloted Bobsleigh or a self-directed Skeleton down the 1,450 meter-long track created for the 2010 Winter Olympics at speeds upwards of 80 kms/hour. “Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme…” Come on, you know you know the rest.

3. It has year-round bungee jumping.

“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” Well, now you can tell your mother that yes, yes you would if they were strapped in 53 meters above the glacier-fed Cheakamus River. Nothing like jumping off a bridge in the middle of winter and plummeting head first toward ice-cold water to really test your adventure tolerance.

4. Downhill skiing is for amateurs.

You can downhill ski at any resort, but in Whistler, you can shoot things at the same time! That’s right. Take on the sport of biathlon and really push your boundaries. Rifles and skate skis? Only for those living life on the edge…

5. Name your favorite type of terrain, and Whistler has it.

A photo posted by Marley (@marleyorange) on Jul 31, 2015 at 1:06pm PDT

From the proud peaks of the Fitzsimmons Range to the shimmering waters of Green Lake, Whistler has it all. There are dirt trails and paved paths. There are rolling hills and bustling parks. Every adventure-worthy landscape lies within its boundaries just waiting to be conquered.

6. You get to be on “Top Of The World.”

Start at the very top of Whistler Mountain and descend nearly 5,000 feet through the granite spires of the Coast Range…on your bike. Whistler’s Top of the World Trail does not disappoint, so load your mountain bike onto the lift and get ready to be amazed.

7. There’s a sweet way to escape the lift lines.

And it’s called heli-skiing. Time to become the next big thing on GoPro’s latest hashtag campaign as you drop in on perfectly untouched backcountry powder. And just think how awesome it’ll be to get picked up by a helicopter when you’re done for the day. #epic

This story was produced through the travel journalism programs at MatadorU. Learn More

I’m not taking about an ape-like creature with giant feet, but I am talking about one hell of a beast. Ziptrek Ecotours’ new 7,000-foot continuous zipline called “The Sasquatch” is the longest line in Canada and the US.

9. And so does The Chief.

A photo posted by Paula May Photography (@paulamayphotography_) on Jun 27, 2015 at 6:35pm PDT

You can’t be addicted to adventure without enjoying trusting your life to some sketchily-placed gear a few hundred meters off the ground. Thankfully, Whistler has Squamish, and Squamish has The Chief. Build up those callouses and get ready to take on “Triumph the Shadow.” It’s only a 5.13b…

A photo posted by BeerAnyone (@beeranyone) on Jul 29, 2015 at 5:31am PDT

Every good adventure needs to be celebrated with a good beer, and luckily, Whistler has quite the selection of delicious brews. Head to Whistler Brewing Company — a local staple since 1989 — to fill up your belly with the best handcrafted hops concoctions in town. High five your fellow adrenaline junkies for still being alive, and indulge in all that is Whistler. ]]>

There’s no doubt I’ve become a better traveler since my first bag of beetles.

When I found myself on the patio of a quaint guesthouse in Siem Reap sitting at a table with a bag full of hundreds of fried black bugs in front of me, I watched the two receptionists and their friends sitting next to me pop the crispy insects into their mouths, smacking their lips and savoring every crunch. I slowly picked one beetle and sat for several minutes tracing it’s outline while watching the locals carefully peel off the wings. When I finally gave in, to my surprise, it was delicious. I only stopped after a woman to my left told me I’d eaten too many. “You’re a real Khmer,” she joked as she poured me another beer and her friends cheered in delight.

I didn’t think twice about trying new foods after that. During my time in Cambodia, I moved on to grilled pregnant forest tarantulas, maggots, stuffed frogs, turtle soup, stewed dog meat, and less exciting things like crickets, spiced gizzards and chicken hearts. Through my adventures in trying everything, here are the six things I learned:

1. Exploring street food is a critical piece of traveling

I travel to explore, to learn, to grow, to have fun, and find something new. For me, food is an essential part of that experience. But sadly, to my dismay, when it came to food, many other foreigners insisted on playing it safe. Often fellow travelers would judge a new food as “gross” before even tasting it. Though I can’t anticipate that everyone will enjoy a wide variety of tastes, I think it’s fair to expect fellow travelers to at least attempt to develop an adventurous palate. By trying local street food, you at least make an effort to somehow engage in a part of a culture travelers sometimes overlook.

2. Food is an art. Treat it that way.

I’ve seen too many travelers treat street food with an unsettling discourtesy. Trying some fried creepy crawler doesn’t warrant screaming, and spitting it out like a child, or throwing a tantrum and yelling at the person behind the food stall. During my time traveling, I’ve watched countless foodstall cooks try to hide their disdain for the blatant disrespect travelers showed when unhappy with new flavors.

Street food is no different from a country’s paintings, sculptures, or music. They are all steeped in history and equally valid parts of a culture. If you visit a museum and you can’t appreciate the display in front of you, you politely move on in search of something better–with street food it’s no different.

3. You never know what a “simple” food might mean to someone else.

While picking through mango covered chilies one afternoon with an old Khmer friend, he told me the story of the fruit’s history in his family. During the Khmer Rouge, his mother was working in the labour camps with his father, and had stopped menstruating due to malnutrition. Upon discovering a hidden mango tree, she began eating them in secret as often as she could. Soon after, she became pregnant. The little nutrition his mother was able to absorb from those mangos allowed her to eventually conceive.

4. Or might mean to a country’s history.

Khmer people always had a diverse diet including a variety of meats, starches, and produce. However, during the Khmer Rouge, consuming insects became increasingly popular when food was scarce and rationed. Learning this made me look at the dish entirely differently. Even if you dislike a dish, the stories behind it are often good enough to be savored.

5. Food shouldn’t have a hierarchy.

With street food, there are no waiting lists, no reservations, and no frills. You’re eating your meal with loud motorbikes and taxis zooming by, while other food-stall keepers are busy yelling about how their treats are better than the stuff next door. People from every social status can eat from the same stand and you’ll see people in rags and suits enjoying the same meal. Nothing is fabricated and so you can’t afford to be a snob. It’s a space where everyone is equal.

6. Food cannot be separated from people.

In the U.S. and most other Western nations, we usually do not see the person who prepares our food. We get our plates, and the server is the medium between customer and cook. With street food, there’s an added layer of intimacy. You see them, and they see you. If you speak the same language, you can tell them that you want more chillies, or less of that sauce. With street food, I not only connect with food, but I’m also reminded that food is connected to human beings.

As a Western traveler, street food allowed me to get into the thick of it–to not only embrace exciting new flavors but also gain insight into the people who brought them to me. ]]>

Think SoCal’s beaches are packed to the gills with nothing to do but laze around? Let a weekend trip to Huntington Beach prove everything you thought about Southern California wrong. Surfing, SUPing, cruising down the strand, chowing on fresh California cuisine, and hitting the hookah bar — there’s a ton of action-packed activities you can cram into 24 hours in downtown Huntington Beach. And the best part is, almost everything you’ll want to do is walkable or a short cab ride from the main hub that is located right on the sand. Here’s some ideas to get you out under that Cali sun in Huntington Beach — otherwise known as Surf City, USA.

Start your morning off at the Sugar Shack Cafe — an old-school joint on Main Street where local surfers have been fueling up since the 1960s. Locals know to grab a curbside table and order up a hot cup o’ joe, a Kepler’s special — a California twist on eggs benedict, and a side of golden crispy hash browns.

After breakfast, grab a cab over to the Huntington Beach harbor to meet up with former pro-surfer and local stand-up paddle board instructor Rocky McKinnon. Spend an hour or two working on your technique while navigating the canals and admiring the fancy-schmancy yachts.

Next, head back to the downtown drag and take a casual stroll to the end of the Huntington Beach Pier. At 1,850-feet long, it is one of the longest piers on the West Coast and an ideal place to watch surfers catching waves or local fishermen reeling in the big guys. You can even try fishing yourself by renting a rod and reel from Let’s Go Fishing, the Pier’s tackle shop.

Outside of Mexico, SoCal has the best fish tacos. Hands down. So once you’ve worked up your appetite head across the street from the pier and grab some grub at Sancho’s. And don’t bother changing. This casual beachfront taqueria is full of beach goers. Don’t miss the mouth-watering Flounder Pounder and the perfectly-grilled Skrimps shrimp taco, which are both loaded with a secret homemade sauce that will have you licking your fingers. Don’t care for fish? The OG Tri-tip taco is served in a lightly fried tortilla and is pure flavor explosion.

Now that you are in a taco-induced coma, it’s time to hit the sand for a chilled out beach session. Head south on the strand and find an open sandy spot to lay out your towel and soak up those SoCal rays. Dip your toes in the water and if you can brave the chilly water temps, dive in and do some body surfing. Or if you want to explore more, mosey over to Toes on the Nose, tucked behind the Hyatt Hotel, and rent a beach cruiser. This cute little surf shop also offers surfing lessons if you want to test your skills on the waves.

As the sun starts to set, snag one of the 500 fire pits that are spread out along the beach. Pick up some firewood and s’mores fixings at one of the local grocery stores and watch the sun light up the Pacific while swapping stores around the bonfire.

This story was produced through the travel journalism programs at MatadorU. Learn More

After your day at the beach, check in and get cleaned up at the Kimpton Shorebreak Hotel, which offers surfer-inspired boutique accommodations with seriously comfy beds and huge tiled showers. Once you are ready to hit up the town, there are tons of restaurants within walking distance. Go to Ritter’s Steam Kettle Cooking for fresh oysters and a west coast spin on traditional Cajun dishes. Or for craft brew and thin crust pizza, try the Pizza Lounge. Upscale more your thing? The Watertable located inside the swanky Hyatt Hotel is California comfort food at its finest, and the warm, salty bread here is to die for.

After dinner, it’s time to get the party started! First, the hookah scene in Huntington is all the rage. One of the hottest spots, the Red Lounge, is just a short cab ride away and has dozens of flavors to choose from and DJs to get the dance party going on the weekends. Or for a good laugh, check out the schedule at the Surf City Comedy Club where shows regularly get rave reviews. If you need an evening pick me up, get back to the beach and order up a famous Irish coffee at the newly opened Irishman Pub. End the night at Hurricanes Bar and Grill, which is right around the corner from the Shorebreak Hotel. Late night at this semi-dive-ish venue, the music is loud, the jello shots are jiggling (if that’s your thing), and the people watching is top-notch. ]]>

BANGKOK, Thailand — There were few perks to the xenophobia that permeated Myanmar’s totalitarian junta for decades. But there was at least one: it kept the scuzziest tourists at bay.

Much of Myanmar (also called Burma) is mesmerizing in its beauty. It’s also now easier to visit than ever. The current government has kicked down many of the hurdles that kept outsiders away during a long era of despotic army rule, which began to recede about five years ago.

But as one of Myanmar’s generals once observed, “when you open the windows for fresh air, flies sometimes get in.” And in Southeast Asia, that can mean anything from sex tourists to drunken backpackers.

Tourism is exploding in Myanmar like never before. The government is targeting 4.5 million tourists this year, a quintupling of the number just five years ago. A new report, however, warns that Myanmar is “poorly prepared” to handle this flood of visitors.

The report, by the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business, suggests developing Myanmar as a “destination for smaller numbers of high-spending tourists looking for an experience that makes Myanmar special.” That is an alternative to simply seeking to jack up the number of arrivals. Instead, the report suggests that the tourism sector “reflect on lessons learnt from elsewhere in Asia.”

Those hard-learned lessons are most evident places such as Pattaya, a seaside town in Thailand that has been consumed by sleaze.

Or Vang Vieng, a party town in the Laotian jungle infamous for cheap drugs, river tubing and backpackers partying so hard they end up injured or dead.

Or Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, where much of the downtown promenade buzzes with hostess bars and pushy drug dealers — all catering to foreigners.

There is nothing quite like this in Myanmar (except, perhaps, for a few dark spots run by militias on the far-flung Chinese border.)

In the mainstream touristed areas, the country has little to offer Western travelers who want to drink by day and haunt brothels by night. The long spell of military rule effectively sealed off the country and preserved a conservative Buddhist propriety that is hard to find elsewhere in Asia. Prostitution certainly exists but is largely confined to scattered karaoke joints and nightclubs.

In impoverished Myanmar, dollars go very far. Arrests for crimes both minor (prostitution) and major (child prostitution) can potentially be avoided by bribing the police. And in a nation rife with child labor and guerrilla war, the prospects for a well-regulated prostitution sector that protects sex workers and routinely screens for disease are extremely dim.

Already in Yangon, the largest and most-visited city, high-end hotels have filled up with more sex workers seeking foreign men. Ethical tourism advocates fear a future Myanmar with “more prostitutes than monks.”Even the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero, has spoken about a “callous expectation of sex tourists” and the specter of “social exploitation.”

This would mark an unfortunate return to a previous era, before the military’s reign, when English colonialists lorded over the country. There was a time in the early 20th century when foreign men sustained what was,according to one academic, a larger prostitution market in Myanmar than any other in British-ruled India.

By Patrick Winn, GlobalPost
This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.

1. The surprising amount of community.

In Vegas, the normal 6-degrees-of-separation rule is actually closer to 3 — which means that you’ll invariably wind up running into that cute girl working at Rubio’s at your best friend’s weed dealer’s house party (and you’ll finally get her name, but also learn she’s dating the DJ — who was on your little brother’s high school soccer team). And it’s hard not to feel like “everyone knows each other in Vegas” when the area-to-population ratio there is nearly identical to that of the “big city with a small town feel” of Portland.

2. Being able to rely on the weather.

Even if it’s extreme, Vegas has some of the most basic weather in the country. In the summer, it’s going to be hot. In the winter, it’s going to be cold. At night, it’s going to be cool. And if it’s going to rain, you’ll smell it in the air for hours beforehand. We rely on this consistency, so much so that the weather is barely a consideration when planning our days. None of this “maybe it’ll rain for 20 minutes, but then maybe it’ll be hot, but then what if it gets cold?” nonsense you might encounter in, say, San Francisco.

3.Being able to shake off the work-week and drink with friends until the sun comes up.

“What do you mean, ‘last call’?” That concept is completely foreign to Las Vegans.

4. The bizarre juxtaposition of old-west and modern luxury.

Vegas is a cultural paradox, where you’re bound to see next year’s Teslas lined up the driveway toward a mini-mansion that’s landscaped with gravel, half-buried wooden wagon-wheels, and cacti. Where that same dude you bumped into in XS the night before wearing a custom-tailored Prada suit drives his Ford pickup in boots and a 10-gallon to the Wrangler Finals at the Thomas and Mack the very next day. And you won’t realize just how weird this identity crisis is, nor just how much you miss it, until you leave.

5. The consistency of the night sky (namely, no stars but a big ass pillar of light in the same place every day).

We’ve all met someone who can tell you their North/South orientation based on what side of the horizon a landmark or mountain is on, but imagine the utter convenience of being able to do that after sunset… thanks to the 42.3 billion candela beam firing upward from the Luxor every night. Sure, it comes at the cost of never being able to see any stars… but frankly, stars aren’t going to get you home when you’re lost in Anthem and a little bit tipsy.

6. Or, just a city that acts like a big nightlight.

Only after you’ve left Las Vegas will you realize you’re actually afraid of the dark — because at night the valley glows like someone has set the entire city on fire, or like the sun never really finished setting. Because in Vegas, things might get a little seedy at times, but they’ll never get truly dark.

7. The ability to find literally whatever you want, whenever you want.

Need to find an alligator pool, a water balloon slingshot, a handle of Jose, and ‘fresh’ Chinese food at 3:30 AM? I can show you where to get all of that… in the same 1 block shopping center. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

8. “The way things were…”

Vegas is one of the few places in the country that is in the midst of such aggressive development that it will look almost completely indistinguishable every time you visit (be it 6 months or 3 years after you’ve left). Desert lots have become mini-malls, defunct coffee shops transformed into cell-phone stores. Even local teens can openly use “back in my day” to describe things that have already drastically changed. Back in my day, we used to play in the miles of drainage tunnels below the city, before the homeless turned them into living spaces. Back in my day, TI was still called Treasure Island, and its family-friendly nightly show was about dueling pirates and not about sexy, under-clothed sirens. Back in my day, we’d go back-to-school shopping at *one* outlet mall in the whole city, which at the time was called “Belz Factory Outlets” (but you probably know it today as Las Vegas Premium Outlets, South). But fear not, because at least (in my experience) while the look of the city changes constantly, the people and the vibe, thankfully, stay the same. So, at the very least, you’ll always have a group of friends out there to show you the new barcade of the month, and to mourn the loss of your favorite burrito-joint with (RIP Guadalajara at Sunset Station). ]]>